MUSIC

MUSIC; Opera As Drama? Not In Handel

By MATTHEW GUREWITSCH

Published: May 13, 2001

HANDEL has reached an awkward age.

After an absence of two centuries and more, his Italian operas -- more than 40 of them, all but the first handful written for London -- now circulate all over the world. So, to a lesser extent, do his dramatically charged masques and the English oratorios he turned to when the British vogue for Italian opera crashed under the weight of its own extravagance.

Yet in ways seldom recognized (and by implication often denied), Handel's operas remain radically foreign, quite the ''exotick and irrational entertainment'' that the great arbiter of taste Samuel Johnson declared Italian opera to be a half-century after Handel stopped producing such things. Unlike every other great opera composer the world has embraced, Handel categorically refuses to be understood in terms of dramatic theories that go back to the Greeks. In Handel, what reigns supreme is the sweet power of song, or perhaps more truly, the singer. Character and action? Strictly window dressing.

Beginning on Wednesday, we may ponder the matter as the Brooklyn Academy of Music presents ''Rodelinda.'' A convoluted tale of love and treachery in the shadow of the throne of old Lombardy, it arrives in a new production by the Opera Theater Company of Ireland trailing a chorus of hallelujahs from the British press.

For New Yorkers, it is the latest float of a parade that began in earnest in 1966, when Norman Treigle's Julius Caesar succumbed to the scintillant Cleopatra of Beverly Sills at the New York City Opera. From ''Giulio Cesare,'' the City Opera has gone on to ''Alcina,'' ''Serse,'' ''Partenope,'' ''Ariodante,'' ''Rinaldo'' and the masque ''Acis and Galatea,'' with ''Agrippina'' announced for next season. The Met's more modest tally consists of ''Rinaldo,'' the oratorio ''Samson'' and a ''Giulio Cesare'' of its own.

On Feb. 23, 1985, Handel's 300th birthday, Carnegie Hall made history with a semistaged ''Semele.'' In a dazzling constellation that included Marilyn Horne and Samuel Ramey, Kathleen Battle broke out that night as the most radiant of superstars. That summer, the impresario Christopher Hunt celebrated the Handel year at the late, lamented Pepsico Summerfare in Purchase, N.Y., with stagings of ''Giulio Cesare,'' ''Tamerlano'' and ''Teseo.'' On one memorable Sunday, all three were played simultaneously under one roof.

Throughout the 1990's, under the banner of the Handel Project (currently on hold), the industrious scholar and conductor Will Crutchfield soldiered through the canon. Mostly under the aegis of the Manhattan School of Music but sometimes in cooperation with Merkin Concert Hall or Caramoor, he unearthed such rarities as ''Deidamia,'' ''Lotario'' and ''Radamisto.''

In previous seasons, the Brooklyn Academy has contributed Les Arts Florissants's ''Orlando'' as well as the Opera Theater Company of Ireland's ''Amadigi di Gaula,'' a hit in 1997. But as noted, the phenomenon is global. This month alone, the insatiable Handelian might catch ''Ariodante,'' starring Anne Sofie von Otter, at the Opéra in Paris, ''Rinaldo'' in Munich, ''Tamerlano'' in Florence and ''Alcina'' in Riga, and this list is not exhaustive.

Handel's champions are legion. The marriage of Baroque theatricality and infinitely varied musical expression in his operas has attracted conductors including Nicholas McGegan, John Eliot Gardiner, William Christie and Marc Minkowski. Directors of the most varied stripes have been fascinated, too, from the period stylist John Copley to the compulsive time-shifter Peter Sellars. Following in the footsteps of pioneers like Joan Sutherland, Janet Baker and Tatiana Troyanos, Handel specialists have been emerging by the dozens, none finer than Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.

Some of the brightest stars of the moment are finding in Handel's operas deluxe vehicles for their talents. ''Alcina'' has proved so for Renée Fleming, Natalie Dessay and Susan Graham in Paris and on CD (Erato), as has ''Rinaldo'' for David Daniels and Cecilia Bartoli on a concert tour and on CD (Decca). Not to mention the general excitement over the latest wave of countertenors: among them, Andreas Scholl and, most thrilling of all, Bejun Mehta.

Triumph on triumph, yet has a single one of Handel's characters imprinted itself on the collective imagination? Interpret Bizet's Carmen as you will, opera lovers everywhere grasp her essence. Name Handel's Alcina or Almirena or Armida or even Cleopatra, and what comes to mind might be an aria or two, free of specific dramatic associations. Small wonder. For singers of Handel's day, recycling hit tunes from opera to opera was accepted practice.

AND yet, apologists since at least the 1960's have been pushing Handel's genius as a dramatist. The usual argument runs something like this. Handel's operas are not ''naturalistic.'' (So far, so good.) Their achievement lies not in the cut and thrust of dramatic confrontation, which Handel in any case relegates mostly to recitative. (Correct.) Rather, we trace the dramatic trajectory of each character through the course of numerous arias, each one of which offers a sharp psychological snapshot at the given juncture of the action. (Hmm.) By the end, we have the full, three-dimensional picture.